Do you use henchmen in your D&D campaign?

[Baron Greystone]

As someone already posted, they're "reasonably common." I play 1st ed AD&D. Reading the rules gave us the idea. And it's nice for a player character to have some muscle of his own to protect him; other players are notoriously unreliable.

Has it ever come up in other games? Well, pets, NPC's, associates, robots and etc do get involved. But it's not usually as prevalent, again probably because it's not in the rules for those games.

Although I do get specific players who are always looking for some 'extensions' of their PC. I don't have a problem with it, and let them run the things unless I feel like stepping in and taking over now and again.

 

[Blackwarder]

As other have already said it's a matter of system, I haven't played AD&D, i moved from BCEMI directly to 2e and we never had a lot of incentive by the rules to hire henchmen, although they were there and we did hire some when we were higher level. when 3e rolled around we stopped having them completely, they simply weren't in the rules.

I got ACKs, and that system just beg you to hire henchmen so I imagine that if we did play it we will have a bunch of henchmen fairly quickly.

All in all I think that henchmen should be part of a dedicated subsystem in the PHB, your charisma score will determined how many henchmen's you can have and there should be reaction and moral rolls but it should be clearly marked as OPTIONAL.

Warder

 

[Jan van Leyden]

If I recall correctly, 1e henchmen had to be of lower level than the character he's connected to. So the poor character has to survive the lowest level without any help. Why start looking for help when you've grown stronger. Somehow it didn't came to be.

In my childrens' game using 2e I openly advertise a variant of the henchmen rule: with only three guys playing regularly my son, as the most experienced player, runs a henchman, even though his character is still 1st level. Myself I'm running two add-on characters as quasi-henchmen, which I'll hand over to the other players when they have grasped the basics of running one character. When this works, I'll perhaps mention the henchmen ruiles to them...

Digging deep in memory I recall the Wenchman and the Henchlass: when we played Dragonlance two characters from the second adventure, Tika Waylan and Laurana, were run as henchman.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I primarily play 3.5. It's always been assumed that the followers/henchmen/whatever are the people that are manning your keep, tending your horses while you're in the dungeon, and sailing your ship. They're there but they're in the background.

 

[D'karr]

I kind if view it as "Do the Justice League hire cronies to go with them to the Phantom Zone?"

No, cause they're the freaking Justice League.

I wonder if this was also one of the lines for Belushi's "Was it over?" monologue on the script for Animal House, but it was dropped for being too controversial... LOL

 

[jodyjohnson]

Stylistically I like having NPCs in the party. Narratively they give the DM someone to have events happen to without taking a PC out of the game. Tag-allongs, helpful strangers, henchmen, hirelings, fellow travellers, cohorts, etc.

I also find out the party will roleplay more when an NPC gets hurt rather than another PC. When it's a PC there's an attitude of "Suck it up Nancy and let's move on."

I like mostly 'genre sim' so I can understand when players who want 'world sim' prefer to leave them home because in the metagame they know they'll just get killed by the first Fireball that gets tossed.

 

[Li Shenron]

Do you use henchmen in your D&D games? And how do you find the choice of system affects their utility?

Yes, I allow henchmen/hirelings, NPC allies and cohorts/followers, but the players are rarely interested.

I think 3.0 has quite good guidelines, and the Leadership feat is fine if you understand how it is meant to work, i.e. it has a mechanical cost therefore it should give a mechanical advantage. If a player takes a cohort via Leadership, my default is that in exchange for the cost you get certain loyalty. You don't get that from hirelings (which you get by paying) and allies (which you get by RPing).

That said, I don't let the players have full control of their henchmen/allies/cohorts directly in the same way they control the actions of their PC. IOW, I run the henchmen/allies/cohorts actions, especially in combat or whenever they can be mechanically useful, and the players interact with them just like any other NPC (but I let the players do the RPing part or their cohorts if they want to).

 

[Quickleaf]

I played the rogue in 1e, so I'm pretty sure I *was* the henchman...
[MENTION=3586]MerricB[/MENTION]
I have run lots of henchmen and hirelings in 4e, entirely dependent on when the story context & player choices called for it. For henchmen I used NPC stats on the DM's side, for hirelings I used simplified minion stats on the player's side.

Prince joined party for an adventure in which his peace mission was at risk.

Two youth - a bastard heir and a sorceress - joined party until escorted to sanctuary.

Suspicious wizard joined party to explore ruins.

Unit of elven archers rescued from monster served elven PC for a mass combat.

Actually, my last campaign finale had the players calling on allies they'd made over the course of the campaign to assist in mass combat. I treated these as minion-summons, and as really potent encounter powers any PC could call upon, such as Gnomish Trebuchets or Ritual Casting Support.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I attached my current PC companion versions. The last, Grumblejack, is my group's current "cohort"/henchman.

In addition, the adventure I'm adapting had some simple hireling rules, assumed to operate independently from the group. (Actually their minions can't even speak Common, and none of the PCs speak Deep Speech.)View attachment WotW Companions.pdf